Linux on the Lenovo Yoga 710

Earlier this Summer I was packing for a trip out of state and discovered that the battery was shot in my years old Asus netbook that I had alway used for travel previously. After spending a weekend hunting down outlets in airports and restaurants so I could stay connected,I knew when I got back that I needed to replace my mobile laptop.

After doing a bit of research on the current options it seemed that there were a number of touch screen convertibles that were reasonably priced. This just left pinning down one that would work best with Linux. A hour of Google searches later it looked like the Lenovo Yoga series had the best support for Linux, not only for the smaller convertibles I was looking at, but also for their larger models in the Yoga series as well. Ultimately I ended up purchasing the Lenovo Yoga 710. I installed the latest iteration of Bodhi Linux and everything seemed to “just work” out the box. None of the hacking and work arounds I had read about in threads from a year ago was needed. They all seemed to have been incorporated into the upstream and my hardware was fully functional out of the box. Wireless, touch screen, suspend functions, and 3D all “just worked” once.

All in all I am really pretty happy with the Lenovo Yoga 710. The battery life is stellar under Linux - lasting close to eight hours during normal web browsing and running for just over four hours while spending that entire time playing 3D games. My only worry with the device outside of Linux support was the quality of the hinge. Because the device folds all the way around I was worried it would wear out fairly quickly, but several months later and the device is still plenty sturdy. If you are looking for a portable laptop that is fairly Linux friendly I would highly recommend giving the Lenovo Yoga 710 a try.